


The Gifts We Give

by simonandbaz (localpersephone)



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Birthday, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, One Shot, Post-Watford (Simon Snow), i tried writing fluff and this happened instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 11:57:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17662178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/localpersephone/pseuds/simonandbaz
Summary: Baz tries to come up with a birthday gift for Simon, and between a little help and some minor snooping, he comes up with something that he thinks would work.





	The Gifts We Give

Penny was fine with Simon and Baz’s relationship. In fact, she was actually sort of thrilled that Simon was in a relationship that he could genuinely be happy in. (Not that he’d been horrible with Agatha, but they’d both been a bit miserable, hadn’t they?). She just didn’t see why Baz had to spend so much time in her and Simon's flat.

It wasn’t a problem most of the time. After all, most of the time Simon was there. They’d go back and forth with their flirting, eventually Baz would leave (or sometimes, he wouldn’t), and that would be that. As much as Penny liked to poke fun at all of it, she really didn’t mind. Baz helped Simon on his bad days when Penny couldn’t get through, and on his good days, Simon was happier than she’d ever remembered seeing him back at Watford. Besides, she’d figured out by this point that Baz really wasn’t terribly company, once you got to know him.

The issue was that at some point he’d gotten a key, and he’d started showing up when Simon wasn’t there, seemingly for absolutely no reason at all.

He sat on their sofa in the living room, legs both propped up on the opposite cushion, back rested against the armrest. Both he and Simon did this, Penny had noticed. For whatever reason, they couldn’t just sit properly, with both feet on the floor. (Penny was momentarily alarmed by how much her internal dialogue sounded like something Agatha might say, but immediately brushed it off as being due to how they’d spent so much time together at school). When they would try sharing the couch together, they’d almost always end up either cuddling on one side or sitting opposite one another, legs crossing over each other.

Penny had her own armchair off to the side, because she valued her right to having a place to sit in her own flat.

Baz was on his phone, scrolling away at—well, something. He’d barely said a word to her since he’d walked in, besides the normal greetings. Then he’d wandered a bit, and then he’d settled himself there.

“You know, you could always at least try to text before you randomly show up here,” Penny said, “Just to make sure that one of us is in.”

Baz looked up vaguely, but the words didn’t seem to have much of an effect on him. “Oh, right.”

“Or, you know. You could at least knock. Dating Simon or not, it’s kinda weird that you just let yourself in here all the time.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Baz said absentmindedly, and then went back to whatever he was doing on his phone.

Penny sighed. She got up and walked to the kitchen, grabbed a dish towel, and promptly returned to the living room so that she could throw it at Baz.

When he looked up now, he seemed significantly more attentive. “What was that for?”

It was funny, Penny thought. For all the years that she’d known Baz, she’d spent most of framing him as this negative force in Simon’s life that neither of them could really do anything about. She’d told Simon to stop worrying so much about Baz on a day-to-day basis, because she’d always had this idea that it’d be pretty obvious when everything eventually fell together (or fell apart, rather) for the two of them. Penny’s interpretation of him had always been somewhat distant, and even if she never got as worked up about him as Simon did, she’d still framed him in her head as just one more enemy that might eventually do Simon in.

Now, however, he was glaring at Penny with this over-exaggerated offended expression that almost made her want to laugh.

“You weren’t paying attention to me. And it’s my flat.” She said.

“It’s also Simon’s.” He pushed the dish towel off of himself and onto the floor. “And I _was_ paying attention to you.”

“It is, but it’s not _yours,_ you see. Key or not.” Penny said. Baz almost looked like he was pouting, now. Penny had to put in genuine effort not to point it out to him; she was already having far too much fun as it was. “And I know you weren’t paying attention, because you didn’t try saying anything minorly clever or slightly mean in response. You didn’t even sneer at me. I know that this relationship has been good for the both of you, but I’ve yet to see proof that it’s gotten you to stop sneering.”

Baz sneered. Really, Penny was starting to think that it was just a reflex of his. Given his family, she wouldn’t be surprised if it was genetic.

“Now—“ She said, returning to her spot on her armchair. “Why are you here and what are you doing?”

“I—“ Baz looked back down at his phone, hesitating to speak.

“Tell me, or I’ll take away the key. I don’t care if Simon has an issue with it.” Penny said. She only half meant it.

“I was trying to figure out what to get Simon for his birthday.” Baz said quietly, “And I thought that coming here might help.”

“Oh.” Penny leaned back in her chair. “Is that all? You know, you could have just texted me if you wanted ideas.”

In fact, it probably would have reminded her that _she_ should have been coming up with something, too. June 21 was only a couple days away, now, and she’d barely even considered the topic. In her defense, The Mage had prevented Simon from talking to anybody over the summers (which, even when she was younger, she’d thought was a cruel move), and so she’d never really had the chance to do anything for Simon for his birthday. Her own was close enough after Christmas that she’d gotten used to not expecting much celebration, and so that had all worked out alright. They did gifts at Christmas, but birthdays had never really been a thing.

But things had changed over the past year, and if there was ever a time for birthdays to become a thing, Penny supposed that now was as good of a time as any. Simon could probably use the extra positivity in his life, anyway.

“I wanted to come up with something unique, though.” Baz said. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. Considering his tone, she guess that if he weren’t a vampire, he’d probably be blushing. It was probably a symptom of his family, but Penny was getting the impression that, outside of Simon, Baz wasn’t entirely comfortable talking about this stuff. She didn’t press him on that. As much as she loved poking fun at Baz, it no longer seemed like the right time to do it.

“Well, if anybody should be able to come up with something like that, it would probably be you.” Penny said encouragingly. “After all, you don’t practically stalk your roommate for most of your teen years without coming out the other side with a load of weirdly specific knowledge about them. At least, as far I can imagine.”

“That really doesn’t help.” Baz said.

“Do you really have no idea where to go with this?”

Baz shook his head. “You do know that I spent most of those years thinking up how I’d eventually have to kill him, right? Not much time to focus on his quirks and interests, there.”

“You obviously focused enough on that other stuff to fall in love with him.” Penny pointed out.

Baz didn’t even grace that with a response. Penny pressed on.

“Your issue is that you’re not looking in the right places. You had the right idea by coming to the flat, but me and Simon haven’t even lived here for a month yet. There’s not enough of him here for you to find. If you’re going to go somewhere that’s actually important to Simon, then you have to go back to the only place he ever stayed long enough for him to like.”

“Watford,” Baz said immediately.

Penny grinned. “Exactly.”

“But I was just practically just there.” Baz countered, “And besides, I feel like whatever home Simon had found in Watford would have disappeared when he lost his magic.”

Penny knew that he meant more than just ‘when he lost his magic.’ He meant when Ebb had died. He meant when The Mage had tried to kill him. He meant every other bad thing that had happened on that night, that nobody ever really liked to talk about, especially not in the middle of the day.

“One bad day wouldn’t have erased everything that Simon had loved about Watford.” She said, and as she did, memories started flying back to her. She’d practically watched him grow up there, after all, as she’d had to keep enough of an eye on him to keep him from accidentally stumbling into something he couldn’t handle by himself.  It was where he made his first real friends. It was the first place that had given him his first real semblance of a normal life—even though she knew that that the whole World of Mages thing had taken him a bit to get used to. Simon loved Watford. He probably still did, even if those feelings were slightly more bittersweet now.

“There’s more of Simon there then you might think.” She continued. “You’ve just gotta try looking back at it like he would.”

Baz sat for a long moment in silence, but eventually grabbed his phone and stood up from the couch (he made this whole show of it, as he had to swing his legs over and onto the ground before he could even stand up). He was smiling. “That’s actually a relatively good idea. Thank you.”

Penny wanted to say something snarky, like _Don’t sound so surprised,_ but she decided to give him a break. “Glad I could help,” she said instead, reaching forward to grab a book that she’d left on the coffee table. She opened it to the bookmark. “Now, if you don’t mind, could you please get out of my flat?”

 

~~~~

 

It was one of those soft summer mornings when the entire world felt like it was at peace, and Baz almost wished that he had taken Simon to Watford with him, just so that he could call that good enough for a gift. Almost, but he also knew that what he was experiencing wouldn’t have been the same for Simon, anyway.

Part of the morning was the sunrise. It was still too early in the year for overly warm temperatures, but besides that, the world still carried that leftover chill that it did on June mornings. It’d rained the night before, but it had been a light rain, leaving everything lightly dusted with water, but without enough that it would have caused any issues.

Part of the morning was the way that the birds were just waking up, as life remembered that it had a job that it really ought to be getting back to. It was funny, almost, how Baz was taking so much joy out of observing life when he didn’t really have much of his own. (Though Simon made him want to rethink that).

Part of the morning was the way that, as far as he could tell, there was almost nobody else there. He’d spent so long living this predisposed role that he somewhat liked the feeling of not having to live up to anything. Even if he’d gotten used to keeping up the act (was it even an act at this point?) whenever everybody else was around.

But part of the morning was the magic that came with Watford. It was the energy that pulsed through the entire place, taking all of those good things that made up a nice morning and pulling them together. Baz knew that Simon wouldn’t have been able to feel any of it, if he was here, and he was sure that it would bother him (he knew that it had the last time he’d been here.)

Besides, Simon would probably laugh at him for being so sentimental about it all.

Baz had ended up back in their old room. For awhile, it had just been his, but he’d never stopped thinking about it as being part Simon’s. For all the time they’d spent there, it would have been hard not to, and besides that, he didn’t want to try to correct himself. In those last months at Watford, it had helped him deal with the emptiness that had come with Simon not actually being there.

(That was something that he swore to himself he’d never actually tell Simon. Even if they were dating now, he didn’t really feel like going out there and revealing just how much Simon had become a part of him.)

(It was bad enough that he knew just how hopeless he’d felt when he’d spent all those years being, well, hopelessly in love with him.)

If there were any place to start, it would’ve been this room. And yet, he still really had no idea where to start.

The few items that Simon had actually owned were long past gone, and anything that Baz would’ve found, he’d probably found already. Sometimes to pass the time, he used to just walk around and open drawers and see what he could make of their contents. The only time he found anything that wasn’t his own was when he’d found one of Simon’s old school uniforms, crumpled haphazardly in one of the drawers on his side of the room. Baz had left it there (really, there wasn’t much reason that he could’ve come up with to get it out.)

He went back to that drawer.

The uniform was in the same spot, probably hopelessly wrinkled and, knowing Simon, in minor need of a wash, Baz got it out anyway, hoping desperately that it would spark something and he’d have some brilliant idea. Instead, he was just left standing there with a mildly dirty uniform and no real idea of what to do next.

He considered if it would be out-of-bounds for him to look through the pockets.

Seeing as Simon would never come back for this, and really, this would just be thrown out or magically repurposed when they went to set the room for its next patrons, he decided to do it anyway.

He found something small and metal in one of the trousers pockets and grabbed at it, before returning the uniform to the drawer in a similarly rushed fashion to how Simon must have, every single day while he’d been at school.

In the palm of his hand, he was left with a small, silver goat.

“Now, why would Simon have this— Oh.” He muttered to himself.

He didn’t like thinking back to last Christmas, and everybody else who had been close enough to say anything concrete about it felt the same way, so it generally went undiscussed and unacknowledged. It was always there, of course, hanging over their heads like a lightning cloud that could strike whenever it chose, but Baz had gotten used to ignoring it.

They’d done their part in the trial. Baz was pretty sure that Simon talked about it with his therapist, but that was still something that he hadn’t managed to get Baz entirely on board with. Really, he thought that it was just better if they all moved past it, and this was his way of doing that.

After all, that day itself had been objectively horrible. On the rare occasions that Baz did think over it—which he actually had somewhat just after it’d happened—he generally just remembered desperation. And it had been true desperation, too. The type that was only born out of a terrible mixture of love and fear.

He’d wanted to save Simon, more than anything else.

But there’d also been the entire World of Mages to think of, too.

He hadn’t actually seen the fight that had taken place between Ebb and the Mage, but he had seen the body. When everything was done, and they were finally leaving that tower, Baz remembered Simon saying to him, low enough that nobody else could hear, “I hope that there’s a proper burial, soon. She doesn’t deserve to be stuck up here, evidence or not.”

At the time, he thought that Simon had been talking about the Mage. He’d convinced himself that he’d misheard him, and that he’d said “he” instead of “she,” and he left it at that. It made sense. For all of the Mage’s evils, he’d practically been Simon’s father for the entire time that he’d been at Watford (a pretty lousy father, maybe, but Baz had grown into thinking that his own situation didn’t give him much place to judge). The Mage had been terrible, and cruel, and Baz still didn’t care much for his brand of politics, but that didn’t discredit how Simon much have been feeling at that moment,

But he hadn’t been talking about the Mage, after all. He’d been talking about Ebb.

Baz looked at the small goat figurine. This had probably been a gift from her, or would’ve been a gift to her, or something of that sort. Regardless, it had to do with her.

Baz hadn’t ever really given much thought to Ebb when she was alive (or much after, as he was realizing. That came with its own sort of shame). She’d always been Simon’s friend, and a minor pain besides that. She’d step in when Baz would pick on Simon just slightly too close to wherever she was at the time, always a further inconvenience to whatever plan he might come up with.

He considered if he ought to rethink that. After all, she’d been friends with his aunt Fiona back when they were at school (though, so had Nicodemus, and he’d turned out to be a bastard). His mother had trusted her enough to keep her around Watford. From what he’d gathered of her, she probably wasn’t as bad as he’d always made her out to be. She was just somebody trying to do the best she could with what she was given, though maybe not in the ways that everyone would have wanted.

Baz wrapped his fingers around the small metal goat. An idea was finally beginning to form, and though it wasn’t entirely the direction he would’ve originally guessed, this might just work. It’d take some time (which he was well aware that he was running out of), but if there was one thing that he’d learned from his time growing up how he had, there was little you couldn’t do without magic and a little extra money available to throw at the things that magic couldn’t help.

He turned his back on that drawer and looked back at the room. In a couple months, this would be home to two new boys. Neither of them would most likely be new to magic, like Simon had been, but they’d be new to Watford, and they’d be new to each other.

Baz lent out a passing thought that their time there would at least turn out to be easier than his and Simon’s had.

And if it didn’t— Well, at least he knew that this room had a decent track record in terms of everything ending up okay.

 

~~~~

 

Simon had barely considered that his birthday was coming up. When he’d been a kid, it had come and passed without any fanfare, the only one there to notice it being himself. Then there’d been the Mage, and he’d always sent him _something_ , but the Mage wasn’t around anymore.

(For all the bad that the Mage had done him, at least he’d remembered Simon’s birthday).

If it had been left up to him, the day probably would have come and gone without him saying a word about it. Time had been slippier recently. Sometimes, he felt like he’d blink and an entire week would go by. Other times, minutes stretched into hours, and hours stretched into years. A difficulty in keeping track of dates had become an unfortunate side effect of all this, and he probably would have been left figuring out that his birthday had passed three days after the fact, at which point he would have made a mental note about how he was now a year older than he’d been before, and then let the matter be.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on who was being asked about it), the matter hadn’t been left up to him.

Penny had practically been on top of him from the moment he’d woken up and left his bedroom. She was beaming as she dragged him by the wrist to the kitchen. There wasn’t anybody in there (which he was minorly grateful for; besides Penny and Baz, nobody really needed to see him that early in the morning).

She let go of his hand and made a dramatic gesture to the plate on the counter. “Happy Birthday!” She exclaimed, and with that, the entire situation mentally clicked into place.

Of _course_ it was his birthday. That’s why Penny was practically buzzing with excitement (he suddenly felt bad that he’d never done anything for her own birthday, and then pushed that thought away with the notion that he would worry about that later). That’s why the kitchen smelled so nice—it was filled with the sweet smell of sour cherry scones.

Simon had lived with magic. He’d once been used to the feeling of magic filling every brim of his existence, threatening to spill over into the world outside. It had felt like energy: like power. It had filled the walls and the floors of Watford, forever a constant companion (until it wasn’t). But even his memories of that couldn’t have compared to the feeling he felt at Penny’s gift.

“Do we have butter?” He asked.

She rolled her eyes. “Of course we do. I just wasn’t going to leave it out while I waited for you to get up.”

Now that Simon didn’t have much of a schedule to keep to, his sleeping habits had kind of fallen apart. He kept promising himself that he would pull it together, eventually, but the two of them both knew that it would probably be a while before he started making a habit of waking up before noon.

Simon went to grab the butter from the fridge. Behind him, he heard Penny mutter a “ _Some like it hot”_ at the scones, but he didn’t say anything. Even now she was wasting magic on him. He let it go, because he knew that she did it with the best intentions. (And arguing never did him any good).

“Where’d you get these, anyway?” He asked.

“Would you believe me if I told you I’d made them?” She countered.

He raised an eyebrow at her (it was a bad habit that he was starting to pick up from watching Baz). For all her efforts, Penny was still only a passable cook, and not much of a better baker. She rolled her eyes again.

“Baz still has an in with Cook Pritchard, apparently.”

Simon grabbed the plate and sat down at their little table. “Is Baz going to be coming?” He was already slathering one of the scones with butter, and watching it all melt away. Penny sat down opposite him.

“Eventually. He actually had his own gift for you, as soon as he finishes tying it together.” She had this glint in her eye that indicated that she knew _exactly_ what Baz’s gift was, and that, whether it was his birthday or not, this was information that she was fully capable of holding over him until Baz got there.

“Isn’t this enough?” He asked. He took a bite of the scone, and for the briefest moment, he felt joy that he’d only thought he’d been capable of before his world had fallen apart. He could tell that this was definitely Cook Pritchard’s doing.

“Simon,” she said, “You have no idea.”

Baz didn’t arrive until midday, and when he had, he’d been practically in a rush to pull Simon out the door.  

“Do you have somewhere to be or something?” Simon asked, and though he was joking, the look that Baz responded with made him wonder if maybe he shouldn’t be.

Baz covered it up quickly enough with a smile. “You could say that.” He waved back to Penny on their way out, who was sitting in her armchair reading. “I’ll try not to keep him out too late.”

“It’s his birthday, keep him out as late as you like.” Penny called back, and even though Simon really ought to be used to those two being friendly with each other by now, he still found it overwhelmingly weird. “Have fun on your drive.”

Drive? How far did they have to go?

They set off as soon as they were both in the car, Baz behind the wheel, and Simon left in the passenger’s seat, wondering what the hell this could all be about. He trusted Baz, of course. He always would. But that didn’t mean that he was immune to the general suspicion that tended to arise from basic curiosity.

“Where are we going?” Simon tried asking, even though he knew that it was useless.

Baz didn’t look over at him, but Simon did see his face twist into a lazy smile. “I feel like telling you would sort of ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?”

Simon shrugged. “Thought it was worth a shot.”

“We’ll get there, and you’ll see.” Baz said, “We’ve just got a bit of a drive.”

So, they drove.

It took a bit to get out of the city, but it was smooth sailing once they were out in the country. Simon had the vague impression that they were going faster than they should’ve been—and not even just in the going-over-the-speed-limit way, either, but in the there’s-definitely-magic-involved way. If there was magic there, he couldn’t feel it. He didn’t point it out. He just let Baz drive, watching out the window at the day passing around them.

They talked, a bit. Their conversations were mostly about little unimportant things, but it was these types of conversations that Simon treasured. It was nice, he thought, to be able to waste time talking about things that didn’t matter. He didn’t have the weight of the World of Mages on his shoulders anymore. He could just talk—about the weather, about his neighbors, about anything in the world—with the boy that he loved and not feel like he was just passing time until the next disaster snuck up on him.

Simon missed magic, but he didn’t miss the stress that had accompanied it.

Eventually, he got the impression that the streets that they were taking looked familiar. He’d never paid much attention before, but when you take a trip enough times, the route pretty much cements itself into your head. Besides, just last year he’d had to walk this path on his own after he’d found out that his driver had been a goblin.

“You _are_ using magic.” Simon said.

“Hmm?” Baz replied.

“We’re heading to Watford, right? We’d only be about halfway there about now, I’m pretty sure.” He said.

“That’s true.” Baz said.

“So what spell was it?” Simon asked. “I don’t think I remember one like this.”

“That’s because you barely knew more spells than you needed to get by without failing all of your classes.”

Simon had to make an effort to frown. Even when Baz was being insufferable, it was hard to be upset with him. “Penny would have known it.”

“Oh, she probably does.” Baz said.

Simon rolled his eyes, but he didn’t push it anymore. There really wasn’t much use, asking about spells and magic. It wasn’t like learning anything new would do him any good.

They arrived at Watford shortly, and Baz parked outside the front gate. There weren’t many people there, as far as Simon could tell. The school would probably grow busier as they got closer to the new school year starting, but it was only June, and the school year was still a few months away. Baz got out of the car, but Simon didn’t follow. For a long moment, he just sat there, staring out at the school in front of him.

For whatever reason, he felt like he was seeing this all wrong. He knew that he should probably be feeling like an outsider here, because that was basically what he’d become. True, he couldn’t _feel_ it the way that he used to be able to, but when it came down to it, Watford still felt like safety to him. Despite the death and everything that had happened here, it carried the weight of a place that would probably never stop being the closest thing he had to a second home.

Baz opened his door back up and looked at Simon. “I hope you’re not waiting for me to go around and open your door for you, because I’m not going to do it. Birthday or not.”

Simon laughed and got out of the car. They’d spelled his wings and tail invisible before they’d left, though Simon wouldn’t have bothered if he’d known that this was where they’d end up.

“So what is this?” He asked, looking out over the grounds. “Is there some sort of party that you’re walking me into?”

“I’d think that it really wouldn’t be much of a party without Bunce there.” Baz said.

Simon shrugged. “She doesn’t really like parties.”

“She would have made an exception for you.”

“So what is it?”

“You keep asking that as though you really think that I’m going to tell you.” Baz had walked around the car to the side Simon was standing at. He took his hand. “Just walk with me, alright? You’ll see.”

They walked through the front gate—it bothered Simon slightly to know that it wouldn’t have opened for him if he was alone, and that the only reason it opened at all was because of Baz. They didn’t talk, now. Simon had only been back once since last Christmas, and he hadn’t made much effort to take it all in during that short time that he’d been there. He did now.

For every building, and every hill, he felt that there was a memory to go with it. Him and Penny, and sometimes, Agatha too. For all the trouble that they’d gone through (he still hadn’t talked to Agatha since everything happened, and although he figured he might eventually, that still seemed a while off), they’d had some genuinely good times. That was part of the reason that he still loved Watford so much—for those times that he didn’t have to be the Chosen One.

He walked with Baz, but he didn’t pay much attention to where they were going. He barely noticed when Baz stopped next to him, and only pulled himself together when Baz had muttered a soft “Simon” from beside him.

He turned his attention to what was directly in front of him.

His heart sank.

“Oh,” He breathed.

They were standing in front of Ebb’s old place (it hurt to think of it as being “old,” because it reminded Simon that there wasn’t an Ebb to live there anymore).

There’d been a funeral, which Simon hadn’t gone to because he hadn’t known if he’d be wanted there. The Mage had killed her as a replacement for himself, and Simon didn’t know if he could have stood there with her family with that information. And even if they hadn’t known that (he figured that most people didn’t), who would he have been to them? He was just some kid that she’d known while she had lived at Watford. He’d considered her a friend, but would they know that? Or would they just figure that he was trying to maintain his position as some special figure even after his magic was gone and his time had passed?

He had visited her grave since then. She was buried on a family plot, full of powerful mages that had already come and gone. He was glad that she’d gotten something. For everything that had happened, she didn’t deserve to be forgotten.

“I’d tried to figure out something to give you that wouldn’t feel too big, but I also didn’t want to get you anything that you would have eventually forgotten about.” Baz said. Simon opened his mouth to tell him that he wouldn’t have forgotten any gift that Baz gave him, but Baz continued on before he got the chance.

“So, I decided that I wouldn’t give you anything at all. I’d give something to Watford, instead.”

He pulled Simon along to the front of the small building, and stopped him when they were outside the front door.

“I hope you think she’d like it.” Baz said, and when Simon followed his gaze, he found a small monument to the left of the door. Towards the top of the monument, there was a silver plaque, and in the middle of that plaque, there was a small, silver goat.

The plaque read: _Ebeneza Petty, who died as she lived—for Watford._

The first thing that Simon managed to say was, “She probably would have hated that it has her full first name.”

That was also all he managed to get out before it became an effort to hold back tears.

He reached a hand out and lightly brushed the goat in the middle with his fingertips. It was warm, from the summer sun beating down on it all day.  “I was going to give this to her for Christmas.”

He’d forgotten about that completely. That last year at Watford, he’d felt bad enough about not having given her anything for the past few years that he’d actually made an effort to go out and buy a gift. It would have been a going away present, he’d thought. A final thing for her to remember him by after he’d left the school (though he’d fully intended on seeing her again, after that).

Now, it was fulfilling a similar purpose in a different way.

Baz wrapped his arm around Simon’s shoulders, and Simon leaned into him. It was getting hard to see straight, now, and his throat was starting to feel dry and choked.

“She died a hero, you know.” Baz said.

Simon shook his head. “She never wanted to be, I don’t think. She had so much power, and instead of using it to be some Super-Mage or whatever the hell they wanted her to be, she’d stayed here with the goats. She just wanted to live a quiet life, but they didn’t let her.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “She loved Watford.”

She had loved Watford the way that Simon did—the way that a person loved a home.

Baz didn’t say anything, but he held Simon slightly tighter against him.

Simon kept talking, even though it was getting harder too. “I like the way it says that, on the plaque. ‘For Watford.’ That’s the way it had been, after all. How it had always been.” It didn’t make her out to be more than she had wanted to be. “Did you come up with that?”

“Penny did, actually.”

Simon nodded, as though it made the most sense in the world. It didn’t really, because very little made sense in a world that let good people die too soon, but it was better for Simon to pretend it did.

“Does her family know?” He choked out.

“They do,” Baz told him softly. “Penny’s mom made sure to get their permission before she even let me put this here. And supposedly, Ebb had a handful of nieces and nephews that aren’t far off from starting at Watford and being able to come see this for themselves.”

“Good.” Simon said, “I’m glad.”

Then the tears started spilling out, and there was nothing he would’ve been able to stop them if he’d wanted to.

This was the feeling that people were supposed to get from funerals, from visiting graves, from letting themselves put the people that they cared about to rest. Maybe he would have felt this before, if he’d actually gone to the funeral, but it was better here. It made more sense. This was the place that he’d known Ebb, and it made the most sense that this was the place where he finally got to say goodbye.

Baz pulled him into a tight hug, and Simon was left crying on his shoulder, muttering “thank you” over and over until it became impossible to say anything else. Baz let him stay there for as long as he needed to, and he only moved to leave after Simon had pulled away and started off on his own. By that point, the sun was starting to set, and it made the school grounds look completely and utterly at peace.

Summer nights were a lot like summer mornings, in that way. Soft and entirely untouchable.

Baz knew that there would be questions later, about how’d he found the goat and how he’d pulled this entire thing together, but for the time being, the two let there be silence.

When the silence eventually broke, it was Simon who did it. “There’s one thing I want to finish up here, before we go.” Simon said, as though something urgent had struck him. “It’s probably nothing, but I really just want to double check.”

~~~~

Somewhere, farther away than the two boys could have comprehended, Ebb Petty had done the one thing that she’d always feared that her brother wouldn’t be able to; she’d moved on.

She wouldn’t be coming back the next time the veil lifted, and really, that was for the best. As much as people might dream about being able to see their dead loved ones one last time, those ghosts lived half-existences.

Ebb, on the other hand, was entirely at peace. She had no unfinished business.

Somehow, somebody had remembered to bring the nannies home. 


End file.
